The More You Ignore Me - in which i am prejudiced against new age detox diets, and obama is awesome (the latter is a given)

Incoherently Yours

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in which i am prejudiced against new age detox diets, and obama is awesome (the latter is a given)

[Nov. 6th, 2008|10:43 pm]

[	Tags	\|	boyzone, juice feasting, obamarama, steve pavlina	]
[	Current Location	\|	my room, crying	]
[	music	\|	wicked game (i know, i'm sorry, my entry whole entry is preceded with a lie)	]

my playlist has degenerated into 'love you anyway' by boyzone and 'womanizer' by britney. or should i say EVOLVED????

OBAMA! i am so happy! but less so by the no gay marriage amendments that got through. stop playing with my heart, america! i so hope obama and k.rudd are friends though. my favourite part of the australian coverage was the filler pieces they had of people speculating on whether they'd be friends and when the first time ruddy and bammy will meet. and they described dubya's and john howard's friendship as a 'vulcan mindmeld', which honestly, will never, ever get old.

statistics are awesome: isa told me today that only 5 african americans have been in the american senate. that means that 20% of all african american senators have gone on to be elected president of the united states of america! OBAMARAMA GUYS!!!

on to less erratic ranting: for the last few years my sisters have been obsessed with this 'personal development' blogger called steve pavlina, who is actually a pretty awesome guy - 10 reasons you should never get a job is just one of his many awesome articles that are intelligent and do motivate you to get off your arse and make your life what you want it to be.

now, even though i do think he's well worth reading, i don't read him regularly, but my sisters do. and they've been telling me that even though they love him, they can't help questioning his sanity recently. This mostly because of his recent obsession with raw food and now 'juice feasting', which involves going on a 90 day fast of drinking vast amounts of juice and no solid food at all.

i don't think being a vegan/raw foodist is bad necessarily, and i do commend anyone who adopts the lifestyle sensibly, whether it's for moral, ecological or health reasons. but i think you may just have a problem when you start talking about your 'addiction' to solid and cooked foods, as steve pavlina does, or how you're proud that you've weaned yourself off food so well that you can get to the early afternoon without eating anything and not feeling hungry, as other raw foodists have claimed proudly.

trying to be generally healthier and detox a bit is good to do, but sometimes i just look at these fads and the extreme things people do to their body and can't help but think it's just an eating disorder manifesting itself under the guise of 'educated' and 'healthy' eating. i've read that a lot of anorexia is about anxiety and control, and some of these extreme eating things might give give a similar feeling of control. not that i think all people who juice feast have eating disorders, just that i think it might attract those disposed to it. and following a restrictive diet and regularly detoxing is a whole lot better than just not eating, i must admit.

but i just can't help thinking about anyone who regularly does extreme detoxes, why are they restricting their eating like this, and to what end? what is the ultimate goal? what people they admire have done this for extended periods of time and improved their lives? where is the evidence that this is actually good for you, or can improve your life more than just normal healthy living? i mean, 3 months not eating anything for your 'health', come on. i've only heard about the mountains of evidence that restricted/ irregular eating screws your body and your metabolism up, sometimes pretty bad. though he is road-testing it for his website, if i was as smart a guy as steve pavlina, i would personally wait for scientific evidence backing the validity of something like juice-feasting (instead of relying on the claims of the couple selling the program) before i started espoused its benefits on my blog. (or at least finish the program first! i prefer my personal development blogging without bias plz.)

maybe i'm just a narrow minded nay-saying party-pooping nancy-pansy who's missing out on the health and spiritual benefits of eating (or not eating) crazy shit. maybe you can detox yourself with juices - though i do want to ask, if it's taking out all your toxins, what other, possibly beneficial minerals could it be forcibly expelling from your body? however, if it is working for people, far be it from me to tell them to stop - just maybe get regular medical check ups.

that said, even of the science of detox is proven to be valid, if faced with the choice of drinking a litre of lemon juice and oil over a few hours so that later i can poop out hundreds of weird gooey green marbles which are purportedly pre-gall stones, or, say, just eating sensibly and exercising regularly, and still expect to live a long and healthy life, don't worry about me losing sleep over it.

but hey, the one thing i rely on in this life is my never-ending capacity for hypocrisy. i'll probably be excreting my own gall-stones next week. excuse me while i book my colonic irrigation.

link

Comments:

From:

colorpencil
2008-11-06 02:34 pm (UTC)

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OBAMARAMA. My first presidential election, and I helped make history by casting my vote to help elect America's first black president. Fuck yea. You bet my ~~sister's~~ grandchildren will never get me to shut up about that. So exciting.

And I have to agree with you on the detoxing/extreme dieting thing. It does appeal to the audiences that suffer from eating disorder, because I felt my squeaky past with anorexia kind of show interest at what you were showing. (Resist, resist!) Anorexia is, (bingo, you go it!) all about control. Control of how you eat, what you eat, when you eat, and if you eat. And if you do, how you burn it off, how to make yourself feel less guilty for eating, all that nonsense. Not fun. And all these fad diets appeal to people with those disorders (maybe not every one of them, but a lot of them.) because it's a new type of control that's socially acceptable, because if Paris Hilton is doing it, why can't I sort of thing. Props to you for seeing that and having a good opinion about it. I'm tired of seeing it and what it does to people. I think that's why I failed at actually maintaining my eating disorder, it's far far to much work for me to invest my time into these days. I swear I had a point. I've forgotten it, if it's not already rambled among the words over head.

And hahahahaha, liquid diets. That guy is going to be regretting it in a week. I did a liquid diet for over a month (not of my own will, but from a tonsillectomy gone severely wrong. Trust me, ice cream sucks after a couple of days.) He's going to be peeing out his butt for 90 days? Have fun with that, good sir. Liquid diets are unpleasant partially because they take away all control over your bowels, because there's nothing to hold back, it just slips on through. I'd like to see someone actually make it through ninety days of liquid only. I'd give them a special prize if they did.

I like your posts, they provoke thought in me at a time of day when no one should even be thinking. (8:30am uuuugh I'm going back to sleep.) I'll be surprised if I managed to spell everything right.

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From:

helgmione
2008-11-06 10:28 pm (UTC)

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*salutes you for voting for Obama* As someone from the world outside America, i've got to say we were all pretty much in love with Obama, but just had to wait to see if America followed through. Welcome back into the fold after Buch-caused segregation! Now hopefully we can all get back to making the good again :)

thank you for saying you found my entry thought-provoking - i was a bit worried since i know some people on my flist have hd experience with EDs, and i didn't want my post to be a kind of trigger, but i decided against cutting it in the long run. i've heard that from other people too - that it takes so much from you just to keep it up. i'm glad that you're eating disorder isn't affecting you anymore (if i'm interpreting you right). i always like your posts too - if i haven't been commenting it's probably because my flist has been 100% ontd_political for the last month or so ;)

heh, it was around midnight when i made the post. i like mindfreaking people in other countries though - i am like the internet criss angel~

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From:

helgmione
2008-11-06 10:54 pm (UTC)

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oh, and he's only on day 12 and explaining all the gory details on his blog of his bowel movements and how terrible he feels, then qualifying it all with 'i wonder what part of the healing process this is?'. maybe it's the part where your body is reacting negatively to the fact you are eating no solid foods! if he was just road-testing to see if it worked, that'd be okay, but the incredible faith he in the program despite the fact it's causing him severe distress is why he's pissing me off.

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From:

redgoldenglory
2008-11-06 02:44 pm (UTC)

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Lul, I agree, most people I've met who do detoxes pretend it's for health but are really super excited about the weight loss benefits. Steve Pavlina though... well, you have to understand the CONTEXT of Steve. He has like a whole ~spiritual cosmology~ going on there. I think he's control freak, of course, but also his attempts to wean himself off food tie into his genuine belief in various psychic and mystical phenomena. Kind of like a Hindu Yogi or a Buddhist monk, I get the feeling that he's trying to detach himself from the transient/illusory material world and identify himself with his higher essence by taking control of his biological functions. Do I agree with it? No. But can I see it as part of a larger pattern of spiritual practice? Yes. It is fun to lol at his daily enemas though.

DAILY ENEMAS

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From:

helgmione
2008-11-06 10:45 pm (UTC)

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HEY NICE 2 TORK 2 U LONG THYME NO BUTTOX U NO WOT I MEEN?

anyway, with steve, that's kind of what i meant - that he's saying he's doing it for all these spiritual reasons, but really he's using it to channel his desperate need for control into an extreme detox diet because he's too rational and educated to channel it into a full-blown irrational ED. what isa said about him and his wife looking sickly - as in it isn't really making him healthier even if he says it does - and the fact that he's basically full on advertising the fee-based juice feasting program and its benefits on his site before he's even finished the program make me question his reasonability when it comes to this issue.

maybe it does fit into his spiritual beliefs and his large pattern of spiritual practice. if so, i think he should focus on that and stop espousing the unproven health benefits of this program that he has no way of knowing seeing as there are no studies and he hasn't even completed it yet. i say this with no reference to his blog at all btw, but i assume that is what he is doing? correct me if i'm wrong, but if he is, it gives me reason to question his sanity. and an explanation i put forward for his behaviour is tendencies towards an ED.

but i do like steve! just not enough to read him a lot. i just find it equally empowering not to read self improvement blogs and just clutch jay mcgraw's life strategies for teens to my breast as silver tears run down my cracked porcelain cheeks. is that so wrong? also, i have enough faith in steve that if he is going a bit crazy, i think he'll be able to pull himself out and be awesome again.

ps: i am listening to 'all summer long' right now, and I BLAME YOU.

pps: plz download rockapella's zombie jamboree and boyzone's love you anyway. i feel you are missing out on something if you don't get to enjoy the music you would hear me blasting everyday if you were at home. do it!!!!!

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From:

redgoldenglory
2008-11-06 02:48 pm (UTC)

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PS. I really liked this post! It was thought provoking and interesting. Also, you admitted you can in some ways respect Steve Pavlina, which to me is a big step up from the HATERADE you were sipping before I left for Germany.

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From:

helgmione
2008-11-06 10:55 pm (UTC)

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